


Sins of Her Past

by randi2204



Series: Sibling!verse [1]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maude's past comes back to haunt her most unexpectedly.  (10 drabbles.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sins of Her Past

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Mendax](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/pseuds/Mendax)'s comments regarding Ezra and Mary. Also, I play fast and loose with Maude's history.
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters belong to MGM, Mirisch and Trilogy. Not mine, no money.

Every time she saw a woman with blond hair, Maude felt her heart twinge, just a tiny little sliver of guilt working its way through her defenses.

 

She hated it.

 

Still, every time – unless circumstances dictated a swift departure – she tried to get close enough to see the woman’s face, to see if there was a familiar cast to her features, to see the color of her eyes.

 

There never was, however.  She was grateful and ashamed and hurt, all at once.  Her past had come back to haunt her in many ways over the years, but never this one.

 

***

She and Ezra each moved around often, mostly out of necessity, so it was difficult to receive correspondence.

 

Then he wrote her from a dusty little spot in the road.  Despite the disparaging tone of the letter, Maude gleaned that he’d be staying there a while.  Her current business venture would soon come to an end, so she decided she’d pay her darlin’ boy a visit.

 

She was surprised to find he’d grown something like a conscience, but she was even more shocked to see the woman whose son her son had been looking for.

 

Her past had found her.

 

***

Mary Travis was the mother of that towheaded boy who’d dreamt his way through the stage ride.  She seemed overjoyed to hold her son again, a wealth of motherly feeling in her bright smile.

 

Seeing her, Maude felt old familiar guilt sting sharp and new. 

 

She was utterly unprepared for the broadside of Ezra’s bitterness that night.  She’d spent the day watching Mary, and the color of her eyes swimming with tears left Maude flayed raw. Ezra’s accusations only reminded her of things she tried not to remember.

 

Her son was the very image of his father.  Her daughter… wasn’t.

 

***

Ezra had been no more than three when his father had died.  As much as she’d wanted to shut the world away and mourn, Maude had herself and a child to feed, so she picked herself up with everything her beloved Elijah had taught her and continued what he’d once jokingly called _the family business_.

 

Discovering she was with child a month later was simply too much. 

 

The baby was born in Saint Louis, a tiny girl with a feathering of blond hair and green eyes like Elijah’s, like Ezra’s.  Maude left her at an orphanage, ruthlessly squashing her guilt.

 

***

Maude left Ezra with her sister and her husband while she went to Saint Louis, and discovered how much easier it was to run a con without a child hanging onto her skirts.  She left him with her sister – or Elijah’s sister, his brother, any relative she could find – more and more, because she would look into her son’s green eyes and hear Elijah asking what she had done with their daughter.

 

In some ways, it was easy _(so easy)_ to harden her heart to Ezra’s pleas to accompany her.  Abandoning one child made it easier to abandon the other.

 

***

Eventually she realized her son’s skill with cards and misdirection, and knew he had a brilliant gift.  She gave him a new deck to replace the worn and tattered one he had, but she saw the battered Stutz box hidden among his clothes.

 

She started taking note of girls, always blond, sometimes with their hair loose, sometimes in tight pigtails tied with bright ribbons, walking with their mothers.  Her eyes followed them, and she knew Ezra caught her watching, big green eyes sad.

 

That he might believe she wanted him to be a girl made her laugh until she cried.

 

***

She was harsh with Ezra, but the sins of her past had come home, and she wanted proof of her son’s love.  How had she managed to forget that she had taught him to resent her as much as he loved her?

 

Her daughter was here in the very same town where her son had, however improbably, become part of the law.  Her lightning mind refused to calculate the odds.  Later, she laughed and saluted with her nearly-empty flask whatever Higher Power was playing with her life.

 

She was a _grandmother_.  That was worth a shot of whiskey or five.

 

***

Of course, even after that painful confrontation, she couldn’t stay away, though Ezra probably wished she would.  She wanted him to remember what she’d taught him – that he could trust no one, not his friends, not even _her_ , his own mother.

 

Trusting like that would get him killed, just as it did his father.

 

And maybe she wanted to prove to Mary – without her actually _knowing_ , of course – that she’d had a better life with whatever people had raised her.  Maude was no mother, no grandmother; she was out for herself every moment.

 

Sometimes, though… sometimes, she let herself wonder.

 

***

Ezra’s letter had spoken of an injury, some danger to Mary.  Over the years, Maude had become skilled at reading between her son’s lines, and found herself worried by what he didn’t say.

 

However, it would never do to let her son know she suffered from such motherly concern; she arrived in town only after she was certain he was recovered.

 

She saw Ezra and Mary walking down the street arm in arm.  Her stomach lurched that she might have to _reveal_ her secret.

 

Identical pairs of green eyes widened in surprise at her arrival, and her guilt intensified unbearably.

 

***

“Tell him you love him,” Mary said; the way those green eyes saw through her was so familiar, though the soft voice wasn’t. “He needs to know.”

 

Maude turned away.  Her panic had been calmed by Mary’s assurances and her own observation of who Ezra was watching, so she had said nothing.  “He’ll convince himself I’m suffering from a brain fever if I say that,” she said, knowing the joke was weak at best.

 

“Then tell him you’re proud of everything he’s accomplished here,” Mary countered.

 

Maude met that familiar gaze squarely for the very first time, smiled.  “I am.”

 

***

October 29, 2010


End file.
